


Panicked And Absent (Like A Bird In A Cage)

by entangledbanks (summerhurleys)



Series: Little Comforts Verse [33]
Category: Bandom, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Light Angst, Non-Sexual Ageplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-22
Updated: 2015-09-22
Packaged: 2018-04-22 23:18:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4854446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerhurleys/pseuds/entangledbanks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Sometimes, when Ryan’s little, he seems to forget things. Not everything of course, but he remembers small details more than the big picture.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>  <em>Ryan’ll remember thing like certain spoken lines he hears from the TV (theme songs stick better), the baby blue stripes on his socks as he wiggles his toes, he remembers the hard plastic feeling of the buttons sewn in as eyes to his stuffed kitten Patches, and he remembers very well the first time to the thousandth time Brendon has smiled in his direction.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Panicked And Absent (Like A Bird In A Cage)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [twentyoneparrots](https://archiveofourown.org/users/twentyoneparrots/gifts).



> This is the little!Ryan fic I feel like some of you guys have been waiting for. I don’t quite know how to introduce this fic, aside from that I’m pretty proud of it. I sincerely hope you enjoy it. (title taken from “A Raindance in Traffic” by The Wonder Years)

_(sometime in the near future)_

 

Sometimes, when Ryan’s little, he seems to forget things. Not everything of course, but he remembers small details more than the big picture.

Ryan’ll remember thing like certain spoken lines he hears from the TV (theme songs stick better), the baby blue stripes on his socks as he wiggles his toes, he remembers the hard plastic feeling of the buttons sewn in as eyes to his stuffed kitten Patches, and he remembers very well the first time to the thousandth time Brendon has smiled in his direction.

 

_-(Sometime in 2006)-_

 

Most of his fonder memories of being little had been with Brendon and Spencer up until this point. However, he had not been involved with them…in this way for long either.

He had been little by himself for quite a bit before this, since he was fifteen, but doing it along with another little and his caretaker was a new thing for him.

Some nights, when he’s not little, by himself in his bunk, he recollects over it all, even if he’s not sure what he’s seeing ahead of himself yet.

 

-*-

 

Ryan and Brendon are on some hotel sofa in a place Ryan won’t remember years down the road, sipping from Capri Suns as they scribble on pieces of notebook paper Spencer picked up earlier that evening. There’s a Disney movie playing on the TV, a lucky chance at catching it on air.

Ryan is ignoring that for the most part however, and is more concentrated on doodling himself and a giraffe with flowers in its mouth.

He notes Brendon sitting next to him, watching the movie and singing along to it more than drawing. He’s also calling out to Spencer every once in a while or talking to Abu, his stuffed monkey which sat on the coffee table.

Ryan doesn’t talk much when he’s little, and definitely not as much as Brendon. He remembers the first time he was little with Brendon and Spencer, and how afterwards, Spencer had asked him why he was so quiet.

He thinks maybe his actual dad had something to do with it, but he wasn’t going to think too deeply on it.

 

- _(around 2008)_ -

 

Overtime, even as Ryan plays more with Brendon, figures out more about him, he still doesn’t feel like he _really_ belongs as part of Spencer’s and Brendon’s thing.

He feels more of a counterpart, an extra to this great Broadway show. He doesn’t really mind.

They aren’t the only ones he ages down with these days. Ryan starts one night stands at some point, he can’t remember, in bigger cities where kinksters are more prone to gathering and in less than convincing places where he won’t be recognized. He finds people who’ll take money to baby him for a night, and he’ll take it. It’s not quite the same, nor is it ideal, but it works for him.

He’s sure after a while that Pete knows of these things, they’re close and Pete _just knows_ things. He never goes to him about it.

Then time passes, things get worse between him and Brendon when they’re big, and he retreats to being little by himself like he did in the beginning.

He constantly confides to Patches when he’s little, whispering to her in the dark of his bunk on nights when the road rumbles under the bus. He whispers so quiet that no one else could hear, that’s how he wanted it.

 

- _(2009)_ -

 

When Ryan and Jon announce their departure, it feels like he’s been surgically split from his supposed conjoined twin. The band had consumed a majority of his life up to that point, influenced decisions he’d made that affected the other facets.

He didn’t have much left except for what he had gained in the last four years. So, for a while…he turned to his little side. He needed to regress and just _not think_.

For a few weeks after the fact, he avoided the public and holed up in his home and was just little the entire time.

No one even checked up on him.

 

- _(2015)_ -

 

Ryan visits Brendon formally for the first time in years when _Fever_ reaches its tenth anniversary, it’s basically required of him and he can’t manage to say no.

It’s been a long time since he’d really talked to many of the people there, the people in Decaydance and Fueled By Ramen, all of them. It’s surreal to him. Especially being in the same room at the same time with Spencer, Jon, and Brendon.

He makes small talk, catches up with friends he hadn’t talked to except over text or quick coffee in the past, but mostly; he eavesdrops, something he doesn’t often do.

At first, he doesn’t hear anything that catches his interest for long, aside from sex talk that he had suspected from certain people…but then certain conversations turned into whispers with mixed words and concepts he hadn’t so much as thought about in over half a decade.

He sees Brendon looking anxious and slightly jittery over by the punch table, which was odd, because Ryan knows he hasn’t had a touch of beer that night. Sarah is beside him, leaning close and whispering in his ear. What she didn’t know, was that Ryan could read lips pretty well. So he focused on her lips to get her words.

“-I know that not everyone here knows about you, and that you’re worried about being too little. Spencer and I promise that it’ll be alright. We’ll be able to go home soon, little one.” Sarah whispers, gently running a hand up and down Brendon’s upper arm.

“You think so, Mommy?” Brendon murmurs in response, leaning into her touch.

Sarah nods, and the two of them walk off from the punch table. That’s when Ryan gets distracted by his spying by a voice.

“You completely zoinked out on me, man. Something up?” Ryan turns to see Travie speak, and all he can do is nod and take a sip from the cocktail in his hand.

His thoughts were running a mile a minute.

 

-*-

 

Ryan didn’t think that Brendon would continue to be little after all these years, after all the split did to them, but he supposes that Brendon might have needed it more in the end than him. Otherwise, he did have Spencer and apparently Sarah as time went on. In fact, Brendon was living the littlespace dream Ryan had always wanted.

A few nights after the event, he sits in bed, Patches in his arm and Dottie at his feet as he watches a Disney movie he’d probably watched with Brendon before, or maybe with someone else. He hasn’t been little in six years, and he’s surprised he hadn’t lost any of his things. Maybe, he think, this was fate finally coming into play. Maybe he should talk to someone about this…

Why not talk to Spencer about it?

He’d taken care of him before, and he imagines he’s largely forgiven him for what he did all the years ago. They were also still friends, so he should still understand, right?

Ryan decided in that moment he’d talk to Spencer about joining their small family of sorts.

 

- _(late 2015)_ -

 

“So, uhm, Brendon’s still ageplaying, right?”

_Wow. Ok. That wasn’t exactly what he meant to say, but it came out faster than he could think._

Spencer crooks an eyebrow for a moment before nodding. “What about it?”

_Yep._ Ryan thinks, _talking about ageplay while drinking apple cider in Spencer and Linda’s house was probably the next to weirdest thing he’s gone through._

“I…wanted to ask a question, but I wanted to be sure first.” he finally speaks, nursing the mug of apple cider in his hands.

“Ask away.”

“So…I haven’t been little in a while, like years, until recently. I-I thought over some stuff and I was wondering…if maybe I could uhm, be little with Brendon again? But with you and Sarah too?”

_Oh god, was that too much to ask?_

“We should talk to Brendon and Sarah about it. I mean, I say yes, but you know that we need Brendon’s input as well. Is that ok?” Spencer responds, surprisingly calmer than Ryan expected.

“Yeah, that’s…really good, actually. Really good.”

 

-*-

 

Ryan knew right away that he would need to put forth a little bit of effort to get Sarah and Brendon to accept him into the family. However, they liked him well enough when he was big and they didn’t seem completely repulsed by the idea purposed, Brendon even going so far as to happily recalling a few memories of theirs to Sarah. In example, like the time when they both stayed up past their bedtime and scared themselves really bad while watching monster movies and crawling all into Spencer’s bed.

Dottie had even come along to keep Ryan company with a familiar face, and she seemed to get along well with Penny and Bogart.

Both Brendon and Ryan aged down right away, almost as if they had been waiting forever to do this again, like fate predicted that they must for some reason do so.

At first, it was mostly Spencer posing as Ryan’s main caregiver, so Sarah could see how Ryan was, so she wouldn’t do something wrong after only really knowing how to care for bubbly, hyperactive Brendon. Ryan completely understood how that was, and made sure he wasn’t _too_ difficult for her.

Ryan was tentative at first, quiet and as out of the way as Brendon and Spencer would allow for the first week and a half.

As in, Brendon almost always insisted that Ryan join in on whatever he was doing, whether it was ‘helping’ Sarah make cake or playing with LEGOs. Spencer would make sure he didn’t feel left out whenever Brendon and Sarah did something on their own, doing something with him at the same time so he couldn’t stew over it too much.

Over time, Ryan slowly became a fixture of the Urie house and even Sarah was directing generous amounts of affection towards her newly adopted little boy.

Brendon soon found that Ryan was more prone to cuddling, and enjoyed body contact more in general when he was little. He took great advantage of this newfound information.

That’s how Pete finds them, not even a month into Ryan being with them.

 

-*-

 

“What, the actual _fuck._ ”

Ryan’s eyes snap open from his nap, and he quickly detaches himself from Brendon upon realizing whose voice it is.

Pete’s only at the doorway to Brendon’s room, but to Ryan it feels like he’s right on them.

Ryan’s still in his headspace, and he’s been down for so long that he can’t truly bother to age himself up enough to properly explain, so he stays tense and silent, trying not to overestimate things and cry in front of Pete.

However, the longer he thinks about it, the more he realizes that Pete isn’t looking on with disgust, but with confusion.

“I thought you might be little, Ry. How long?” Pete breaks the silence, slowly making his way into the room.

“A long time…like _a long_ time.” Ryan responds, sitting up as he loses the nerves he’d gathered upon awakening, Patches in his hand.

Pete hums, nodding his head almost fondly as he sits in the scoop chair that was normally reserved for Brendon. “Okay. Are you enjoying being with them?”

Ryan knows he means Spencer, Sarah, and Brendon, so he nods. “I hope I can stay with them for a long, long time.

Little do Ryan and Pete know, Brendon was just awake enough to catch on to that.

 

-*-

 

“Ry, Ryan, wake up.”

Ryan is gently shaken awake by Sarah, who’s looking extremely happy; which, for some reason, concerns him greatly.

“What’s wrong, Mama?” Ryan murmurs, rubbing his eyes as he sits up, feeling the still foreign words on his lips.

‘Mama’ was what Ryan wished to call Sarah, for ‘Mommy’ only reminded him of past one night stands and broken promises. Sarah didn’t mind at all.

“Nothing’s the matter, baby. Brendon, Spencer, and I want to give you something special before Breezy and Dallon come over. Would you like to come to the den?”

Ryan’s mouth rounds into an ‘O’ as he nods, wriggling out of the daybed he was in, Patches in one hand, the other held out for Sarah to take.

His mind is reeling as he’s led down the hall, wondering what exactly they wanted to give him. They’ve already done so much for him, and he’s barely done a thing for them.

“You don’t have to do anything more than what you’re doing now, Ry.” Sarah says, and Ryan realizes he said that aloud. “You make Brendon and Spencer so happy, and I’m glad I’ve gotten to know you, as a little boy and a big boy. You’re such a sweet, amazing person, and I hope you want to become a permanent member of the family.”

Before Ryan can so much as respond, they’re already in the den, where Brendon and Spencer were sitting on the sofa, a small present bagged between them.

“I guess you told him already?” Spencer asks, a small grin on his face as Ryan and Sarah situate themselves on the sofa with them.

“I’d love to-I’d love to join your family.” Ryan sputters, then moving to hide his face behind his hands as he blushes.

He can hear Brendon giggling for a moment before something light lands in his lap. “Open it, Ry! Please?”

His hands are then moved and Brendon presses his nose into his. All Ryan can do is laugh into the Eskimo kiss given.

“B, let Ryan open his present so you guys can play.” Sarah interrupts gently, and Brendon sighs and moves back, crawling to her so Ryan can unwrap the present.

Ryan takes his time pulling out the tissue paper, putting it around him and driving Brendon into a nervous itch with impatience.

Once he finally gets to the bottom, he pulls out a soft object, and places it in his lap. After a moment to process, he realizes it’s a bright yellow stuffed octopus, decorated in tiny black dots on the tentacles.

A smile grows on his face, and he then picks it up and hugs it close along with Patches.

“Thank you so much. I love you.”

Ryan knew he’d be okay here.

 

_End._


End file.
